writing the heart of your story (13 page)

Ask this: How is my protagonist changed by the end of the story by something this other character says or does? If you can set up a way for this secondary character to influence your protagonist in a way that helps or hinders her from reaching her visible goal, she will become an intrinsic and valuable member of your “cast.”

Think about
. . . taking a look at your secondary characters. Make sure you’ve created a life they live outside the novel’s main plot. Think what their story would be in your novel if your protagonist went away on vacation for a year. What would they be doing? Bring some of this into the scenes with your character. Try to come up with a subplot that clashes with the protagonist’s visible goal. This takes work, but your novel will be so much better for it!

Think also about creating some moments described above. Find a place in the novel where you could insert a pause with a significant moment between your protagonist and this other character. Think of one other secondary character with whom you can do this with as well but in a different situation and way.

This wraps up the section on characters. I hope you’ve been challenged and inspired to write not good but great characters, and you can see the importance of giving each character a rich history, as well as an assortment of needs, fears, dreams, and lies they believe. Characters are the heart of your story, and if you create unforgettable characters, your book will be an unforgettable one that people will talk about long after they’ve read it.

Part Three: The Heart of Your Plot and Theme

Chapter 19: The Plot Thickens

“Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.”

~Elizabeth George

Now that you’ve created and developed some terrific characters, we’re going to take a brief look at theme and plot. You’ll notice this book barely touches on plot. Why is that? Plot is of huge importance to reaching the heart of your story. In fact, if your book has a plot with no heart, it will flop out of  the starting gate, and the supporting walls leading to the mother lode in your mine will collapse a few feet in. I’m a stickler for tight, engaging, and well-thought-out plots. Even though I consider myself a character-driven writer, I make no concessions—in my own novels or in those of my clients’—for any weakness or plot holes.

But because plot is such a rich topic and volumes can be written about it, I’m going to save all that for a future book—for I have way too much material about plot to include in this one instructional book. Suffice it to say, there are some terrific books at your disposal that are all about plot, and so I would encourage you to pick up a few—especially James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure. And there is a ton of information on the web about plots and how to write them. I certainly don’t want to repeat all the great material you can find out there. So I’m not going to go into the basics on how to structure a plot. This book is all about looking at the heart of your story, and so my focus is more on why you’re writing the story you are and what passion you are bringing to it.

I would, though, like to share some thoughts I have about layering plots, since this ties in so nicely with what we looked at regarding secondary characters and the need for them to have their own lives and subplots.

Plots—Bigger Is Better

I’m going to assume for now you have your plot all worked out. Maybe you’ve already written your novel and you’re in a revision stage. Maybe you’re at the place where you think your plot is pretty darn good and doesn’t need any work, and you’re focusing more on enriching your characters or subplots. Wherever you are with your novel, I’d love to offer some thoughts and suggestions on ways you can look deeper at your plot and maybe push the edges a bit to make it bigger.

Sure, you can add some more subplots, and if those are done well, they will add a lot to your story in terms of revealing character and emphasizing your theme (which we are just about to look at). But your main plot is your story, and there’s a reason you wrote it.

Ask and Ye Shall Make It Worse

If you haven’t done this at all at any time before or during the writing of your novel, I’d like you to consider spending some quiet time asking yourself these questions after identifying your theme and the take-away thought or message you want to give your readers when they finish reading your book. Your protagonist has a goal and is facing a problem to get there. Ask:

* What’s the problem about? How can I make it bigger? If I take my protagonist out of the story, what does that problem look like in universal terms?

* How can I make this problem the protagonist has harder? How can I make things worse in the outer world and in his personal life?

* How can I make the effects of this problem worse for other people as well? How can I broaden the scope of this problem so it affects a greater scope?

* What does this problem push people to do that they wouldn’t normally do? How can I blow that up bigger and make them do worse things?

* How can I make it harder for my protagonist to solve this problem? How can I raise the stakes so more is at risk? If I have just one thing at risk, what other things can I add and put at risk?

These are just a few questions to get you revisiting your plot from a distance. You may feel locked in with your protagonist going through certain doors and overcoming a set number of obstacles to reach the end. But if you can make your story bigger and more complex in some ways, you will have a plot that is richer and works on many levels. For example, if you have a man leaving his wife, his actions are affecting his wife and children. But what if his actions cause a snowball effect and by leaving he creates other problems? Maybe his wife is already on the brink of a breakdown, and this pushes her to do something terrible—like drive drunk and smash the car, which maims his child? What if leaving his wife creates repercussions at his job, causes him to make a deadly mistake that harms others?

Make a Mess

You can freewrite ideas on paper. Just let them come. Think of more ways to make a mess for your protagonist. Even if you’ve already written the book, you can add layers by making the problem bigger, giving it a wider scope. You can have more people in the protagonist’s world rocked by how he is handling his problem, which only makes it worse for him.

Layers and Layers of Plot, Oh My!

Novelists do focus heavily on plot, and rightly they should. Your novel needs a well-crafted and believable plot. A good story will have one. A great story will have many plot layers. You could call them subplots, but I find it helps to think of them as layers because of the way they work in your story. Plot layers come in all thicknesses of importance, and if they are designed carefully, they will make your story a rich “cake” with unique and lasting flavors that will linger long after your reader finishes your book.

One way that may help you in developing and deepening your plot layers is to think about your own life. You have some big goals—long-term, long-range goals, or maybe even only one—on the horizon at the moment. Maybe it’s to finish college and get that degree. Maybe it’s to start a family and create your dream life with your spouse. In a novel, that might be your main plot, which features the visible goal your protagonist is trying to reach. This is the overarching plot that all the other plot layers will sit under. But just as with a multilayer cake, when you take that bite, the different flavors of the layers should complement each other and create a delightful overall taste.

Life as Layers

As that “plot” plays out in your life, other things encroach or dovetail that goal. You may be dealing with some personal issue—like a recurring health problem or a former boyfriend who keeps showing up against your wishes. You may also be dealing with trivial issues, like trying to decide what color to paint your bedroom, and the paint store guy, who’s completely incompetent, can’t get the color right.

Life is made up of layers. I picture them by their size and scope. You have the big, fat layer of the main plot on top, then different layers underneath of different thicknesses and flavors. All this creates a very rich cake. If life were just one sole “plot” (“I gotta get that college degree”), it would be boring and so would you. And so are novels that only have one plot layer. Life is complex. It’s messy. We’re told to complicate our characters’ lives. Well, this is the best way to do it—by introducing many layers of plot, and not just for your protagonist but for your secondary characters as well.

Vary the Intensity of Each Layer

If you can create three layers at least, think of them as plots A, B, and C. You know your A plot—it’s the main one driving your story. But now you need B and C. You want B to be an important layer that will help the main plot along—either something that enhances Plot A or runs headlong into conflict with it. Plot C will be thinner and more trivial, and may even add that comic relief in your tension (picture your character trying to get the paint guy with myopia to see the obvious difference between the two unmatching paint swatches).

Take this a step further and imagine one of your secondary, supportive characters in your novel dealing with an issue that juxtaposes with your protagonist’s issues. Remember the example of Debby, who was fighting infertility, and at her peak of despair at being unable to conceive, her best friend Joan not only learned she’d accidentally gotten pregnant—she’d decided to get an abortion. Can you see how this plot layer can add depth to your story by providing a place to reveal more of your protagonist’s needs, fears, and personality?

A mystery I wrote—
A Thin Film of Lies
—needed a big revision, so I decided to make a secondary character my protagonist. Fran is a bit sketchy in the original story; you know a little about her life, personality, and tastes. She’s a homicide detective investigating the hit-and-run that frames my story. But now I needed to bring her to the forefront.

Not only did I deepen her involvement with the main plot and increase the number of her scenes, I added an ongoing, growing tension with her teenage son that exposed issues of trust and believability—elements that are primary themes of my main plot. Fran doesn’t really believe in her perp’s claims of innocence regarding the hit-and-run, nor does she believe her son’s when he insists he didn’t hack the school’s computer. In the midst of all this, she hates the LA heat, which exacerbates her terrible asthma, so my Plot C is the aggravating element of her air conditioner at home always going on the fritz—which compounds the tension and “heat” in her house and family life.

And let me tell you a little secret that makes a ton of sense to me: Plot C is often a great catalyst to revealing important aspects of your character and story. Remember, it’s often the little incidents in life that send us over the edge or trigger a breakdown or breakthrough.

Ever fall apart when you can’t get your car to start? What if you put your character at the edge of desperation and she needs to get somewhere fast—and then her car (the one she’s been taking back and forth to the shop the whole novel) finally dies. Think of all the ways a Plot C can really mess things up. Usually the scenes dealing with Plot C are the pivotal ones in my novels.

Play with your themes. Brainstorm these plot layers, and then find places in your novel, or create new scenes, where you can add these in. If you do, you will end up with a delicious, irresistible story readers will love to dig into and that will lead to the heart of your story.

Think about
. . . creating a list of ideas of how you can make the protagonist’s problem bigger. Don’t edit yourself as the ideas come. Let even the most ridiculous ideas end up on the page. Then, when done, see if you can find a few you can add to your plot to make it bigger.

Take a look at your plot, and if you don’t have any B or C layers, think of one of each that will complement your main plot. Find places in which to bring these out, or create some new scenes to play out the new plot layers. You’ll be amazed at how doing this will deepen the heart of your story.

Chapter 20: Themes That Speak to the Heart

“You can't tell any kind of a story without having some kind of a theme,

something to say between the lines.”

~director Robert Wise

Time to dive into another big novel element that speaks directly to the heart of your story. I’m going to delve deeply into themes because I feel a great book always has a great (or more than one great) theme. Think about what Donald Maass writes in
Writing the Breakout Novel
: “Most authors launch into their manuscripts without giving any thought to theme. Breakout novelists, on the other hand, generally are writing for a reason. They have something to say. . . . When [readers] run across a novel that has nothing to say, they snap it closed and slap it down—or perhaps hurl it across the room.”